In addition to the usual wireless telephony provided by cellular telephones, such devices are also widely used for sending short text messages (under the name Short Message Services or SMS) between wireless users.
More recently, new devices and supporting network services are being introduced that allow a more general class of messages to be sent between wireless devices, where the messages include voice, still images, and even moving images. Standards have been introduced for such services including Multimedia Message Services (MMS) and Enhanced Message Services (EMS).
However, as attractive as such new services are to users and wireless network providers, they require new and expensive wireless devices, of which few have been deployed to customers, as well as extensive additional network capabilities. Further, these new services do not inter-operate with existing SMS services in a seamless manner.
In view of the foregoing discussion, there is a need for a system that overcomes the drawbacks of these new services and provides comparable advanced capabilities using only the inexpensive devices and networks currently available to support standard text SMS and that seamlessly inter-operates with SMS services. Further, it is desirable for such a system not to be limited to wireless phones, but to also work with wireline phones with SMS capabilities and services over such wireline devices.
A related service is described in U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2005-0136955, published Jun. 23, 2005, entitled “Techniques for Combining Voice with Wireless Text Short Messages,” the content of which is incorporated be reference herein. In order to implement this service further, it is desirable for there to be an ability to store and access the messages created by the service and to be able to intercept user SMS text messages for insertion of the additional information into the text messages to allow the service to operate.
Further still, it is desirable that there be methods to provide inter-working with other services such as voice mail, multimedia messaging service, and instant messaging (IM).